了不起的盖茨比:有声导读·插图版:英汉对照
After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression ‘mad man’ as he bent over Wilson’s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.
Most of those reports were a nightmare—grotesque, circumstantial, eager and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade—but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too—looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it and cried into her handkerchief as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man “deranged by grief” in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.
时隔两年，我还记得事发之后的那个白天，那天晚上和第二天所发生的一切。一拨又一拨的警察、摄影师和报纸记者在盖茨比家的大门口进出不停。一根绳子拦住了外面的大门，旁边一名警察站着，防止看热闹的人闯入。可是，一帮小男孩很快发现他们可以从我家院子绕进去，总有几位张大嘴巴，惊讶地围观着游泳池。一位举止得体、看似侦探的人那天下午赶来，俯身检查威尔逊尸体时用了“疯子”一词，他语气中即兴而发的权威为次日早晨的新闻报道定下了基调。
大多数报道读来像个噩梦——光怪陆离、借题发挥、幸灾乐祸、似是而非。当穆凯利斯在验尸时所作的证词透露了威尔逊对其妻子的怀疑之后，我想八卦报刊不久就会肆意渲染将整个故事捅出来——然而，本来以为凯瑟琳或许会口无遮拦地说些什么，可她却闭口不谈。她还在此事上展现了令人意外的巨大魄力——她那双描正的眉毛底下的眼睛坚定地看着验尸官，发誓她姐姐从未见过盖茨比；她姐姐跟她丈夫在一起非常幸福；她姐姐从来没有任何不检点的行为。说完她自己都对此深信不疑，捂着手绢痛哭流涕，仿佛这些问题的提示已经让她承受不了。因此，威尔逊就被降格为一名“因悲伤过度而失常”的人，以便该案件能按最简易的形式处理。于是，案件就此了结。
But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
“Left no address?”
“No.”
“Say when they’d be back?”
“No.”
“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?”
“I don’t know. Can’t say.”
I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him:“I’ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don’t worry. Just trust me and I’ll get somebody for you—”
Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway and I called Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five and no one answered the phone.
“Will you ring again?”
不过，这一部分似乎远离事件的核心，无足轻重。我发现自己是站在盖茨比一边的，而且是独自一人。自从我用电话到西卵村报告这一惨案之后，每一个有关他的猜测或实际问题都转到我这里。起先，我有点措手不及和迷惑不解；后来，时间一小时接一小时地过去，他依然躺在家里不动弹，不呼吸，不说话，我渐渐意识到我应该担起责任来，因为没有其他人有兴趣——兴趣，我指的是每个人最终都有权利得到的那种强烈的个人兴趣[1]。
我们找到他半小时之后，我就给黛西打了电话，完全出于本能，也没有丝毫的犹豫。可是她和汤姆那天下午早早就出了门，还带了行李。
“没留地址？”
“没有。”
“说过他们什么时候回来吗？”
“没说。”
“知道他们在哪儿吗？我怎么跟他们联系？”
“我不知道。没法说。”
我想给他找个人来。我想到他躺着的房间去安慰他：“我会给你找个人来，盖茨比。别急，相信我。相信我，我一定给你找个人来……”
迈尔 ·沃尔夫谢姆的名字没列在电话簿里。管家给了我他在百老汇大街上的办公室地址，我就给问讯台打电话，谁知等我问到他的电话号码，早已过了五点，没人接电话。
“你能再接一次吗？”
“I’ve rung them three times.”
“It’s very important.”
“Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.”
I went back to the drawing room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest continued in my brain.
“Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.”
Some one started to ask me questions but I broke away and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk—he’d never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing—only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence staring down from the wall.
Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon—but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived, no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem’s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.
DEAR MR. CARRAWAY.
This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.
Yours truly
MEYER WOLFSHIEM
“我已接了三次了。”
“事情很重要。”
“对不起。恐怕那儿没人。”
我回到客厅，一时间我还以为厅里来了不少不速之客。其实，是一批官方人士突然光临，挤满了客厅。就在他们拉开床单、目不转睛地看着盖茨比的时候，他的抗议声仍在我脑子里响着：
“嗨，老兄，你得给我找个人来。你必须更努力一点。我可不能这样孤苦伶仃地走啊。”
有人开始向我提问，可是我推脱了，上楼把他书桌里没锁上的抽屉都匆匆搜寻了一遍——他从来没跟我明确提起他父母是否已经双双离世。我什么都没找到，只有丹 ·寇迪的相片，一个已被遗忘的暴力象征，从墙上俯视着。
第二天早晨，我派管家去纽约给沃尔夫谢姆送封信，向他打听点消息，并恳请他搭下班车赶来。写信的时候，我还觉得这个请求似乎有点多此一举。我确信他一见报上的报道，就会上路赶来，正像我确信中午之前黛西一定会来封电报——可是，既没电报又不见沃尔夫谢姆光临；除了更多的警察、摄影师和记者，没人来过。管家带回沃尔夫谢姆的回信时，我内心已开始涌起一股傲视群雄的感觉，深信盖茨比和我可以携手蔑视和对付他们所有人。
亲爱的凯拉威先生：
这是我一生中最令我惊骇不已的消息之一，我几乎无法相信这消息会是真的。这个人的疯狂行为应促使我们大家思考。我目前正是要务缠身，无法脱身过来，也不能介入此事。等过一阵，如有什么我能做的，请派埃德加送信告诉我。听到这样的不幸消息，我简直不知自己身在何处，可说是完全崩溃了。
你忠实的，
迈尔 ·沃尔夫谢姆
and then hasty addenda beneath:
Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.
When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.
“This is Slagle speaking...”
“Yes?” The name was unfamiliar.
“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?”
“There haven’t been any wires.”
“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving’ em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns—”
“Hello!” I interrupted breathlessly. “Look here—this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation... then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.
I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
下面匆匆附加了一笔：
请通知我有关葬礼等方面的安排；对他的家人一无所知。
那天下午，电话铃声响了，长途台说是芝加哥来电，我以为黛西总算来电话了。电话接通后听到的却是一个男人的嗓音，又轻又远。
“我是斯莱格尔……”
“什么？”名字不熟。
“那条子写得不赖，是吗？收到我电报了吗？”
“没收到任何电报。”
“小帕克遇麻烦了，”他飞快地说，“他在柜台上递债券的时候，他们逮了他个正着。就在那五分钟之前，他们刚收到纽约发来的一份通知，上面标明了号码。你怎么能想到会这样，嗯？你没法料到会在这种乡野小镇……”
“喂！”我气急败坏地打断了他，“听着，我不是盖茨比先生。盖茨比先生死了。”
电话线那头静默良久，接着一声惊叫……然后吧嗒一声之后电话就匆匆断了。
我想是第三天，从明尼苏达州的一个小城来了一封由亨利 ·切 ·盖芝签署的电报。电报上只说发报人马上动身，请等到他抵达后再举行葬礼。
It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse so I took him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn’t eat and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.
“I saw it in the Chicago newspaper,” he said. “It was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.”
“I didn’t know how to reach you.”
His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.
“It was a mad man,” he said. “He must have been mad.”
“Wouldn’t you like some coffee?” I urged him.
“I don’t want anything. I’m all right now, Mr.—”
“Carraway.”
“Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?”
I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived they went reluctantly away.
After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred until he came.
来的是盖茨比的父亲，一位严肃的老人，神情显得既可怜又沮丧，在和煦的九月天里裹着一身低廉的长外套。因为情绪激动，他的眼泪流淌不止。当我从他手里接过包裹和雨伞时，他不断地伸手拉着他那撮花白的胡子，以至于费了好大劲才帮他脱了外套。他几乎累垮了，所以我领他进了音乐室，让他坐下，同时派人弄点吃的东西给他。可是他不吃，杯里的牛奶从他颤抖的手中溢了出来。
“我在芝加哥的报纸上看到了消息，”他说，“芝加哥的报纸全报道了，于是我立即赶来了。”
“我不知道怎么联系你。”
他的目光呆滞，但是眼睛不停地扫视着房间。
“是个疯子干的，”他说，“他一定是疯透了。”
“你不想来杯咖啡吗？”我劝他。
“我啥也不要。我现在好了，先生，你贵姓……”
“凯拉威。”
“嗯，我现在没事了。他们把杰米放在哪？”
我带他进了客厅，他儿子停放的地方，把他留在那儿。几个小男孩跑上台阶，朝厅里张望；当我告诉他们谁来了，他们就拖拖拉拉地走了。
过了一会，盖芝先生开门走出来，嘴巴半张着，脸微微发红，眼睛偶尔断断续续地滴着泪水。在他这个年龄，死亡已不再算是什么闻知惊魂的大事。等他初次环顾四周，看见高大华丽的门厅和宽大的房间从这连通其他房间，他的悲伤就和一股令他惊叹的自豪融汇在一起。我扶他进了楼上一间卧室，他脱下外套和背心，我在一旁告诉他一切安排都已推迟，等他来定夺。
“I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby—”
“Gatz is my name.”
“—Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body west.”
He shook his head.
“Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr.—?”
“We were close friends.”
“He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man but he had a lot of brain power here.”
He touched his head impressively and I nodded.
“If he’d of lived he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.”
“That’s true,” I said, uncomfortably.
He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly—was instantly asleep.
That night an obviously frightened person called up and demanded to know who I was before he would give his name.
“This is Mr. Carraway,” I said.
“Oh—” He sounded relieved. “This is Klipspringer.”
I was relieved too for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd so I’d been calling up a few people myself. They were hard to find.
“The funeral’s tomorrow,” I said. “Three o’clock, here at the house. I wish you’d tell anybody who’d be interested.”
“我不知道你想怎么来办，盖茨比先生……”
“我姓盖芝。”
“……盖芝先生。我猜你可能想把遗体运回西部。”
他摇摇头。
“杰米向来更喜欢东部，而且他在东部升到这个地位。你是我孩子的朋友吗……先生？”
“我们是要好朋友。”
“他应该是大有前途的，你知道。他还是个年轻人，但是他这里很发达。”
他郑重地用手碰碰头，我跟着点点头。
“如果他还活着，他或许会成为一个伟人，一个像詹姆斯 ·杰 ·希尔[2]一样的人，他会帮助建设国家的。”
“说得很对。”我说，感觉有点别扭。
他来回扯着绣花床罩，想把它从床上拿下来，然后硬挺挺地躺下——立刻睡着了。
那天晚上，一个明显惊慌失措的人来电，坚持要知道我是谁才肯通报他的姓名。
“我是凯拉威先生。”我说。
“哦！”他松了口气说道，“我是克利坡斯布林格。”
我也松了口气，心想盖茨比的坟前会多一位朋友。我不愿登报，那会招来一帮看热闹的人，因此我自己已开始打电话通知一些人。找到他们并非容易。
“葬礼定在明天，”我说，“三点钟，就在家里。我希望你会通知任何有意来参加的人。”
“Oh, I will,” he broke out hastily. “Of course I’m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.”
His tone made me suspicious.
“Of course you’ll be there yourself.”
“Well, I’ll certainly try. What I called up about is—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “How about saying you’ll come?”
“Well, the fact is—the truth of the matter is that I’m staying with some people up here in Greenwich and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I’ll do my very best to get away.”
I ejaculated an unrestrained “Huh!” and he must have heard me for he went on nervously:
“What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it’d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see they’re tennis shoes and I’m sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F.—”
I didn’t hear the rest of the name because I hung up the receiver.
After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby—one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor and I should have known better than to call him.
The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn’t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy was marked “The Swastika Holding Company” and at first there didn’t seem to be any one inside. But when I’d shouted “Hello” several times in vain an argument broke out behind a partition and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.
“哦，一定，”他匆忙说，“当然，我不太可能遇上任何人，但是遇上的话，我会。”
他的口气让我生疑。
“你本人一定要来的。”
“嗯，我一定争取来。我来电话是为了……”
“等一下，”我打断了他，“先答应你会来行吗？”
“呃，事实是……实际情况是我现在跟格林尼治[3]的一些人待在一起，而他们更指望我明天陪他们。事实上，明天说好去野餐或干什么。当然了，我会尽量努力抽身出来。
我情不自禁地叫出一声“嘿！”他想必听到了，因为他接着又神情紧张地说：
“我来电话是因为我有双鞋留在那儿了，能不能麻烦管家给我寄来。你知道，他们是网球鞋，没它们我毫无办法。我的地址是 B. F.……”
我没听完他说的那个名字，因为我挂了电话。
过后，我为盖茨比感到一丝羞愧。有个我打电话去找的人居然还暗示盖茨比是死得活该。不过，那是我的失误，因为他就是曾在盖茨比家喝酒后壮着酒胆污蔑盖茨比最厉害的家伙之一，我就不该给他打电话。
出殡那天的早晨，我去纽约见迈尔 ·沃尔夫谢姆，要找到他似乎除此之外别无他法。根据开电梯的小伙所出的主意，我推开一扇门，上面印着“卍企业控股公司”字样。一开始，里面好像没人。我叫了几声“喂”之后没有反应，但是一扇隔板后面传来争论的声音，很快一位可爱的犹太女人出现在里面一个门口，用黑黑的敌视眼光看着我。
“Nobody’s in,” she said. “Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone to Chicago.”
The first part of this was obviously untrue for someone had begun to whistle “The Rosary”, tunelessly, inside.
“Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.”
“I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?”
At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem’s called“Stella!” from the other side of the door.
“Leave your name on the desk,” she said quickly. “I’ll give it to him when he gets back.”
“But I know he’s there.”
She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.
“You young men think you can force your way in here any time,” she scolded. “We’re getting sick an’ tired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, he’s in Chicago.”
I mentioned Gatsby.
“Oh—h!” She looked at me over again. “Will you just—what was your name?”
She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.
“My memory goes back to when I first met him,” he said. “A young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn’t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Winebrenner’s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn’t eat anything for a couple of days. “Come on have some lunch with me,” I sid. He ate more than four dollars’ worth of food in half an hour.
“里面没人，”她说，“沃尔夫谢姆先生已经去了芝加哥。”
她的前半句明显是谎话，因为有人已在里面开始用口哨不成调地吹着“玫瑰经”。
“请告诉他，凯拉威先生想见他。”
“我可不能把他从芝加哥拽回来，对吗？”
这时有一个声音，毫无疑问是沃尔夫谢姆的声音，从门的那一边叫道，“丝黛拉！”
“把你的名字留在桌上，”她迅速地说，“他回来我就给他。”
“可是我知道他就在那儿。”
她朝我跨了一步，双手开始在她的臀部上下气急败坏地挥动着。
“你们年轻人自以为可以随时闯进来，”她训斥道，“我们都受够了。我说他在芝加哥，他就在芝加哥。”
我报出盖茨比的名字。
“噢……噢！”她再次打量了我一番，“请你稍……你姓什么？”
她消失了。过一会儿，迈尔 ·沃尔夫谢姆庄重地站在门口，伸出双手。他把我拉进他的办公室，用一种虔诚的口气说眼下我们大家都十分难过，还给我递了一根雪茄。
“我回想起与他初次见面的情形，”他说，“一位年轻少校，刚离开部队，胸前挂满在战争中获得的勋章，可是他穷得只有军装可穿，因为他买不起便服。我第一次见到他时，他正好走进四十三街上的温布莱纳酒吧的台球室，请求给份工作。他已有多天食不果腹了。‘来，和我一起吃点午餐。’我说。在半小时之内，他吃完了四块多美金的食物。”
“Did you start him in business?” I inquired.
“Start him! I made him.”
“Oh.”
“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything—” He held up two bulbous fingers “—always together”.
I wondered if this partnership had included the World’s Series transaction in 1919.
“Now he’s dead,” I said after a moment. “You were his closest friend, so I know you’ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.”
“I’d like to come.”
“Well, come then.”
The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.
“I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he said.
“There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now.”
“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different—if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end.You may think that’s sentimental but I mean it-to the bitter end.”
“你帮他开始经商的？”我问道。
“帮他！我栽培了他。”
“噢。”
“我让他从零开始，或者说从地沟里出来，飞黄腾达。我当时一看就确定他是个一表人才、气度不凡的年轻小伙子。等他告诉我他是牛‘劲’毕业的之后，我就知道他日后可以很好地为我所用。我让他参加美国退伍军人协会，他曾在里面爬上了很高的位置。他一开始就为我一名在奥尔巴尼的主顾办了一件事。我俩干什么事都亲密无间”——他举起两个胖乎乎的手指——“永远在一起。”
我脑子里在揣测，不知道他们的搭档是否包括一九一九年那次世界棒球决赛的交易。
“现在他去世了，”我停顿片刻说，“你曾是他最知心的朋友，所以我知道你今天下午会来参加他的葬礼。”
“我想来。”
“那好，来吧。”
他鼻孔里的毛微微抖动，他的头摇动着，他的眼睛布满了泪水。
“我不能来……我不能牵涉到这件事里面去。”他说。
“没什么可以牵涉的，现在一切都已过去了。”
“凡事有人被害，我从来不想与之有任何牵连，我不介入。我年轻的时候，情况不同——如果朋友死了，不管怎样死的，我都会为他们尽力到底。你可能觉得那是感情用事，但我说话算话——一拼到底。”
I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.
“Are you a college man?” he inquired suddenly.
For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a “gonnegtion” but he only nodded and shook my hand.
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,” he suggested. “After that my own rule is to let everything alone.”
When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.
“Jimmy sent me this picture.” He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. “Look there.”
It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly.“Look there!” and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.
“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty picture. It shows up well.”
“Very well. Had you seen him lately?”
“He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.”
我看得出来，出于他自己的原因，他已决意不来参加葬礼，所以我站了起来。
“你是个大学毕业生吗？”他突然问。
我一时以为他会再次向我提议建立一个“关系”，可是他只是点头，跟我握手。
“我们都得学会在人活着的时候讲讲交情，而不是等他离世之后，”他提议，“人走之后，我个人的规矩是诸事任其自然。”
我离开他办公室时，天空已变得黑压压的，我冒着绵绵细雨返回西卵。换了身衣服以后，我来到隔壁房间，见盖芝先生在门厅里兴冲冲地来回走着。他对儿子和儿子的财产所抱有的自豪与时俱增，而此刻他有件东西要让我看。
“杰米寄了这张照片给我。”他的手指哆哆嗦嗦地掏出他的皮夹子，“你瞧。”
那是一张别墅的照片，几个角已破裂，经过许多手的触摸有点脏。他热情地把每个细节指给我看。“你看那！”说完就想从我眼里找到赞赏的表情。他把照片让人看了又看，以至于我相信在他眼里那张照片比别墅还要真实。
“杰米寄给我的。我觉得这是张非常美的照片，景象逼真。”
“非常好。你近来见过他吗？”
“两年前，他来看过我，还替我买了我现在住的房子。当然，他离开家的时候，我们挺伤心的。我现在明白他离家出走是有原因的，他知道自己有个远大前程。再说，自从他成功之后，他一直对我相当的大方。”
He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called “Hopalong Cassidy”.
“Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.”
He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12th, 1906. And underneath:
Rise from bed .................................................. 6.00 A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling ................ 6.15—6.30 A.M.
Study electricity, etc ......................................... 7.15—8.15 A.M.
Work ................................................................. 8.30—4.30 P.M.
Baseball and sports ........................................... 4.30—5.00 P.M.
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it .... 5.00—6.00 P.M.
Study needed inventions ................................... 7.00—9.00 P.M.
GENERAL RESOLVES
No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No more smokeing or chewing
Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
Be better to parents
“I come across this book by accident,” said the old man. “It just shows you, don’t it?”
他好像不愿把照片放回去，依依不舍地又在我眼前举了一会。然后，他把照片放回皮夹子，从口袋里掏出一本又旧又皱的书，书名是《牛仔卡西迪》。
“你瞧，这是他小时候看的书。真是从小看到大。”
他翻到书的封底，转过来让我看。在封底最后一页上工工整整地写着“时间表”和一九零六年九月十二日的日期。下面写着：
起床…………………………………………上午6:00
哑铃锻炼和爬墙……………………………上午 6:15-6:30
学习电学等…………………………………上午 7:15-8:15
工作…………………………………………上午 8:30-下午4:30
棒球及其他运动……………………………下午 4:30-5:00
练习演说……………………………………下午 5:00-6:00
学习需要的发明……………………………晚上 7:00-9:00
个人决心
不在谢夫特或【另一店名，字迹不清】浪费时间
不再吸烟或嚼咽
每隔一天洗澡
每周读本有益的书或杂志
每周存五块（涂去）三块美元
对父母更孝顺
“我无意中发现了这本书，”老人说，“真是从小看到大，对吗？”
“It just shows you.”
“Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once and I beat him for it.”
He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use.
A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously and he spoke of the rain in a worried uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.
About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate—first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months before.
I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby’s grave.
“真是从小看到大。”
“杰米注定要高人一筹。他一直制订类似这样的自勉条例。你注意到他用什么来改善他的脑袋瓜吗？在这方面，他一直很棒。有一次他说我的吃相和猪一样，为此我还揍了他。”
他不舍得合上书，大声念了每一条自勉条例，接着又殷切地看着我。我想他巴望我抄下这张表供自己使用。
三点钟不到，路德教会的牧师从法拉盛赶来，我也不由自主地开始从窗户向外眺望，看看有没有其他车辆到达。盖茨比的父亲也在望着。时间分分秒秒地过去，仆人们进来在门厅里等着，他的眼睛开始焦虑不安地一眨一眨，还忧心忡忡地、不知所措地念叨着外面的雨。牧师再三看看他的手表，我只好把他拉到一边，让他再等半个小时。可是，仍然无济于事，还是没人来。
五点钟左右，我们三辆车的送葬队伍到达公墓，顶着密密的细雨在门旁停下——灵车在先，黑得可怕，湿淋淋一片；后面是盖芝先生、牧师和我坐的大型轿车；最后跟着的是四五名仆人和西卵村的邮递员坐在盖茨比的旅行车里，个个淋得像落汤鸡。正当我们准备进入公墓大门前往墓地，我听见有辆车停下，然后是有人踩着湿透的地面，溅起一潭潭泥水，跟在我们后面。我回头一看，原来是那位戴着猫头鹰眼镜的人，也就是三个月前的一个晚上我看见在盖茨比书房里对他的藏书赞叹不已的那位。
自从在书房的偶遇，我再也没见过他。我不知道他是如何得到葬礼的消息，甚至还不知道他的大名。雨水从他厚厚的眼镜上直躺下来，他摘下眼镜，擦去雨水，看着那块遮挡的帆布从盖茨比的坟墓上揭开来。
I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed man said “Amen to that” in a brave voice.
We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-Eyes spoke to me by the gate.
“I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked.
“Neither could anybody else.”
“Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.”
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations:“Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
那时刻，我想再把思绪转回到盖茨比，可是他已远远离去。我能记得的就是黛西还没送过信息或鲜花，但我却没有一丝怨意。我隐约听到有人喃喃地说，“上帝保佑恩泽沐浴下的死者，”接着，带着猫头鹰眼镜的人勇气十足地呼应，“阿门！”
我们着急忙慌地在雨中跑回汽车里。鹰眼在公墓门口跟我聊了几句。
“我没能先到别墅来。”他说。
“别人也没能来。”
“真的！”他吃了一惊，“哇，我的上帝！他们曾经在那一聚就有好几百人。”
他又摘下眼镜，从里擦到外。
“这家伙真可怜。”他说。
我脑海中最记忆犹新的往事之一是圣诞期间从私立预科学校，后来从大学，回西部度假。凡是去了比芝加哥还远的地方的同学会约定十二月一天晚上下午六点聚在老旧、幽暗的联邦车站，跟一些家在芝加哥、早已沉浸在节日欢乐中的朋友们匆匆见个面、告个别。我记得从这个女校或那个女校回来的女生们身穿的皮大衣，记得老友重逢时大家呼着快冻结的气息叽叽喳喳地说话，双手挥过头顶，记得相互间查对各自受到的聚会邀请，“你去过奥德威家吗？去过赫斯家吗？去过舒尔芝家吗？”还记得戴着手套的手里紧紧抓着的长条绿色车票。这最后就是芝加哥、密尔沃基和圣保罗铁路使用的模糊的黄色客车，停在车站大门旁边的轨道上，看上去就是一派圣诞节的快乐气氛。
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
That’s my middle west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house-the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.
当我们离站驶入寒冬的黑夜里，真正的雪，我们的雪，开始在我们列车两边伸展出去，迎着车窗闪闪发亮，沿途威斯康星州小车站上的淡淡灯光一闪而过，一股猛烈、狂暴的寒气突然间卷入空中。我们用完晚餐从冰冷的车厢过道返回时，大口大口地呼吸着它。在这不寻常的一小时里，我们不可言喻地深感自己与这片故土有着千丝万缕的情结，过后我们就会再次天衣无缝地融汇在其中。
这就是我的中西部——不是麦子、不是草原，也不是已经不复存在的瑞典移民小镇，而是我青少年时代扣人心弦的还乡列车，是严寒黑夜里的街灯和雪橇铃声，是从灯光明亮的窗户里折射在雪地上的冬青花环影子。我是其中一分子，漫长的隆冬历练使我生性有点矜持，自幼在凯拉威公馆长大，而且是在一个数十年来民宅都以家族大名称呼的城市长大，使我有点怡然自得。我现在才明白，这故事原来还是个西部的故事——汤姆和盖茨比，黛西和乔丹，还有我，都是西部人。也许，我们都有某种共同的缺陷，使我们不可思议地无法适应东部的生活。
即使在东部最令我振奋的时候，即使在我最清楚地意识到，比起俄亥俄河流域以外那些单调乏味、杂乱无序、肆意膨胀的小镇（在那里只有老幼才能幸免无休止的调查），东部自有它的优越之处——即便如此，对我来说东部总是有点失真。尤其是西卵，它依然常常出现在我更为奇妙的梦幻里。在我看来，西卵如同艾尔 ·格雷柯[4]所画的一幅夜景：一百幢既普通又怪诞的房子蹲伏在阴沉、低垂的天空和惨淡无光的月亮之下。画的正面有四个举止庄重、身穿礼服的男士沿着人行道，用担架抬着一位身穿白色晚礼服、喝得酩酊大醉的女士。她的手在一边耷拉着，首饰闪着寒光。男士们神色严峻地拐进一栋房子--进错了门。可是没人知道这位女士的名字，也没人在乎。
After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.
There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us together and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still listening in a big chair.
She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.
“Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly.“You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while.”
We shook hands.
盖茨比过世之后，东部就这样在我心底留下挥之不去的阴影，其形象被扭曲得远远超出我眼睛可以矫正的能力。因此，当焚烧枯叶的蓝烟在空中袅袅升起、寒风把晾衣绳上的湿衣服吹得硬邦邦的时候，我决定返回老家。
走之前，还有件事得办，一件棘手、讨厌的事情，或许就应该不再追究了。可是我想把事情一一了结，不指望让乐于助人但又不尽心尽力的大海把我遗弃的东西一扫而光。我跟乔丹 ·贝克见了面，把我俩之间的事情，以及此后发生在我身上的事，前前后后说了一遍。她坐在一张大椅子内，安然不动，仔细听着。
她的一身装束是打高尔夫球的衣服。我记得曾经觉得她像一幅好看的插图，下颚洋洋得意地微微翘起，头发的颜色如同秋叶，脸和搁在膝盖上的无指手套一样都是咖啡色。等我说完，她没发任何议论就告诉我，她已和另外一个人订了婚。我有点将信将疑，尽管我知道只要她点头，就有好几位她随时可以嫁的男士，不过我故意表示惊讶。一瞬间，我心里捉摸不定，不知自己是否正在犯着一个错误。接着，我又急忙思忖一番，起身与她告别。
“无论如何，是你把我甩了，”乔丹突然说，“你那次在电话里就把我甩了。我现在对你毫不在乎了，不过当时算是让我新领教的经验，一段时间内搞得我头昏脑涨。”
我们握了握手。
“Oh, and do you remember—” she added, “—a conversation we had once about driving a car?”
“Why—not exactly.”
“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”
She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back holding out his hand.
“What’s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?”
“Yes. You know what I think of you.”
“You’re crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “Crazy as hell. I don’t know what’s the matter with you.”
“Tom,” I inquired, “what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?”
He stared at me without a word and I knew I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started to turn away but he took a step after me and grabbed my arm.
“哦，你还记得，”她补充了一句，“我们有一次关于开车的谈话吗？”
“嗯……记不清了。”
“你说过一个糟糕的司机只有在遇到另一个糟糕的司机之前是安全的？嗨，我遇上了一位糟糕的司机，对吗？我是说我不小心做了个误判。我以为你是个诚实而直爽的人，那都是因为你深藏不露的自尊心。”
“我都三十岁了，”我说，“越过可以欺骗自己、然后再声称是自我尊严的年纪已有五年光景了。”
她没有回答。我很恼火，但依然怀有几分爱慕之情，心里也充满遗憾，悻悻然转身走了。
十月下旬的一天下午，我遇见了汤姆 ·布坎南。他在第五大道上走在我前面，一副模样还是那么警觉和咄咄逼人。他的双手在身体前面挥动着，好像随时准备击退别人的阻挡，头部剧烈地左右摇摆，这和他转溜不停的眼睛很合拍。我正想放慢脚步避免赶上他，他却停下，对着一家首饰商店的橱窗皱起眉来。忽然，他看见了我，走回来，伸出了他的手。
“怎么啦，尼克？你不愿跟我握个手？”
“说得对。你知道我对你的看法。”
“你疯了，尼克，”他急切地说，“简直疯透了。我不明白你究竟是怎么回事。”
“汤姆，”我问道，“那天下午你都跟威尔逊说了些什么？”
他一声不吭地望着我，我随即明白，有关在那几个不明底细的小时里究竟发生了什么我都猜对了。我转身就走，可是他紧跟一步，抓住了我的胳膊。
“I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave and when I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house—” He broke off defiantly.“What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.”
There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn’t true.
“And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful—”
I couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...
I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.
Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.
“我把真相告诉了他，”他说，“他来我们家时，我们正准备出门，我让人传话说我们不在，他就想往楼上闯。如果我不告诉他那辆车的主人是谁，他已疯狂到决意要杀我的地步。在我们家的时候，他的手分分秒秒都按在他口袋里的手枪上……”说到此处，他突然打住，狂妄起来。“我告诉了他又怎样？那个家伙自找麻烦。他迷糊了你的眼睛，就像他迷糊了黛西的眼睛一样，不过他是个心狠手辣的人。他撞飞茉特尔犹如撞飞一只狗一般，连车都没停。”
我无言以对，除非揭穿他的话不是真相，无奈的是这是一个难以诉说的事实。
“你别以为我没遭受到任何痛苦——听着，当我去退那套公寓、看见那盒倒霉的狗饼干还在橱柜上，我坐下来哭得像个婴孩一样。天哪，难受极了……”
我不能原谅他或喜欢他，但我理解，从他的角度来想，他所做的都是情有可原的。一切都源于粗心大意和混乱困惑。他们，汤姆和黛西，都是粗心大意的人——他们砸碎东西、害人丧命，接着就退避到他们的金钱里，或者是他们无节制的粗心大意怪癖里，或者无论什么能维持他们在一起的东西里，却让别人去清理他们的烂摊子……
我还是跟他握了握手。不握的话反而显得不明事理，因为我心中油然产生一种感觉，好像我在跟一个孩子在对话。接着，他走进首饰商店去买一根珍珠项链——也许就买一副袖扣——从而永远摆脱我这乡巴佬神经质的指责。
我离开的时候，盖茨比的别墅仍旧空着——草坪上的草长得跟我院里的草一样，好久没割了。村里一位出租车司机载人经过大门没有一次不停下，手往里面指指点点；也许就是他在出事的那天晚上开车送黛西和盖茨比去的东卵；也许他自己已添油加醋地编造了一个故事。我可不想听这故事，所以下火车后远远地避开他。
I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter faint and incessant from his garden and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over.
On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
我选择在纽约打发星期六晚上的时间，因为盖茨比家灯光闪耀、令人眼花缭乱的聚会在我脑海里依然记忆犹新，我还能听见从他院子里传来轻微但不间断的音乐声和笑声，听见一辆辆汽车在他的车道上开进开出。有天晚上，我还真听见一辆车在那儿，看见它的车灯停照在门口台阶上。可是我没去细查。可能是一位最后的客人出差远行到了天涯海角，不知道聚会早已散伙，人去楼空。
临别的前夕，我的东西已装箱，车也卖给了杂货店老板，我过去再看了一次那座象征一个重大但又难以名状的失败的别墅。在白色的台阶上，有个小孩用砖片涂成的不雅字眼在月光下显而易见，我把它擦了，鞋子在石头上刮得蹭蹭直响。然后，我漫步走到海边，四脚朝天地躺在沙滩上。
海滨的大别墅多数都已关闭了，除了在海湾里往来的渡船上有些阴暗、浮动的闪光，几乎看不见任何灯光。明月高高升起后，那些微不足道的房子也就自行消失了，直到我的想象里慢慢浮现出这座曾为荷兰水手[5]的眼睛大放异彩的古岛——新世界的一片清新、翠绿的宝地。岛上已消失的树木，也就是那些为开建盖茨比的别墅而让道的树木，曾经轻声细语地迎合了人类最后也是最伟大的梦想；在那稍纵即逝的美妙瞬间，人们在这一新大陆面前想必屏住了呼吸，身不由己地坠入一种既不理解也不渴望的美学沉思，在历史上最后一次面对能与其创造奇迹的能力相媲美的新挑战。
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
当我坐在沙滩上思索着那个古老、鲜为人知的世界时，我想到了盖茨比第一次认出黛西家码头尽头的那盏绿灯时所感受到的惊奇。他历经漫长、曲折的道路才来到这片蓝色的草坪[6]，仿佛他的梦想已经近在咫尺，几乎不可能再错失圆梦的良机。他所不知道的是，他的梦想早已丢在自己的身后，丢在这座城市以外广阔无垠的不明之地，在那儿，美利坚合众国黑黝黝的原野在夜色中伸向远方。
盖茨比信奉这盏绿灯，即年复一年在我们面前愈来愈渺茫的未来极乐世界。它已经躲避了我们以往的追求，但是没关系——明天我们会跑得更快，我们的双臂会伸得更远……也许就在一个明媚的早晨——
于是，我们奋勇向前，船迎着浪头而上，又不断地被顶回，重返过去。
[1] 尼克暗指盖茨比死后竟然没朋友和家人有“兴趣”来帮忙或奔丧。
[2] 美国二十世纪初的铁路大亨，曾在作者家乡居住过。
[3] 纽约市曼哈顿下城西边的一个街区，一直以文人雅士聚集和酒吧咖啡馆林立而名扬四方。
[4] 十六世纪西班牙画家，以宗教素材为主。
[5] 从十七世纪开始，荷兰人是长岛地区最早的欧洲移民。
[6] 盛产于肯塔基州和弗吉尼亚州，一种光线要求较低的草，价格昂贵，此处喻指盖茨比的阔绰和排场。